1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument which controls tone-generating characteristics depending on performance information, such as key-velocity.
21. Prior Art
Conventional types of electronic musical instrument as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Publication No. 53-5545, detect key-velocity of a key depressed by a player, and converts the key-velocity into tone volume control data based on a touch conversion table stored in a memory. The tone volume control data then controls volumes of musical tones. FIG. 1 shows a characteristic curve of tone volume control data D which changes in accordance with the variation of key-velocity. The characteristic curve shown in FIG. 1 is referred to as a touch curve, hereafter.
It is desirable that the touch curve should change depending on the performance technique, sex, physical strength, and the like, of a player. For example, women generally have less strength than men, thus, the variation of tone volume control data D should have larger values than the variation of tone volume control data D for men.
However, conventional electronic musical instruments only have a few touch curves, so that it is therefore impossible to select a suitable touch curve for every player.
In addition, in the case where a keyboard is connected to a musical tone generating apparatus through a data transferring system as per the MIDI standard (Musical Instrument Digital Interface Standard), in which the musical tone generating apparatus is produced by a different manufacturing company in contrast to the keyboard, the performance of an electronic musical instrument is down graded because a selected touch curve is not valid, resulting in a player being unable to express a feeling adequately in a performance.
Accordingly, the touch curves of the conventional electronic musical instrument are not sufficient to enable a successful performance to be achieved.
Another type of electronic musical instrument has been developed enabling selective setting of a touch curve. However, with this instrument it is difficult to set the touch curve to satisfy a player, and the setting takes much time and skill.
A type of electronic musical instrument in which a touch curve can be selectively set is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 59-838.
Heretofore, the touch curve has been described by way of an example. But any information relating to player's operation can also be processed similar to the touch data.